Is slaughter on the streets a form of slow genocide of the urban poor?

I read with horror the weekly body count of shooting victims on Chicago’s mean streets each Monday. Forty or more shot with half a dozen or more dead is the norm, not the exception.

Chicago hospitals are on track to patch up nearly 3,500 shooting victims this year, excluding the ones simply buried. The relatives, friends, colleagues and acquaintances of those victims is likely over a million.

Most shootings occur in poor, minority communities woefully lacking in every virtually every societal service enjoyed by me and my fellow citizens of privilege.

The majority of folks living outside America’s shooting galleries appear oblivious to the carnage. ‘If it’s not occurring in my neighborhood why should I get involved’ may be a typical response. More ominous might be ‘Let all those undesirables kill each other off.’

Our political class and our capitalist gun industry are doing nothing to prevent millions of guns filtering down to anyone in need, regardless of legal restrictions. This allows kids on those mean streets to play with real guns like my friends and I played with cap guns in the 50’s.

There is a cruel irony that the Second Amendment, designed to arm white slaveholders to control their human property of color, is now used to funnel unlimited guns into communities of color, resulting in a form of self-destruction.

The thought crosses my mind. Is the carnage we’re seeing, even if unintentional, a form of slow genocide from above of America’s most vulnerable?